Shelf Sea Biogeochemistry blog

Monday, 1 December 2014

Visitng E1

Ocean research cruise blog of Jonathan Sharples

We arrived at position E1, south of the Eddystone, at about 0600.
This is a site regularly sampled by the Plymouth Marine Laboratory
(PML), generally about once per month but more frequently recently in
collaboration with the project we are working on. Scientists and
technical staff at PML maintain a data-gathering buoy out here. We
carried out 6 seabed cores this morning, and were then met by the two
PML boats. Coring the seabed from the PML boats is difficult, so they
are very happy that we can stop here for a few hours to collect these
samples for them, and transfer the samples to their boats to be taken
back to PML and analysed.

pml explorer alonside

It was also our last CTD profile here at E1, at 0630. And it was
fully mixed from the surface down to the seabed! Not too surprising as
E1 is fairly close to the permanently-mixed water of the English
Channel, and it’s only 75 metres deep. So we expect it to become mixed
relatively early in autumn. We’ll do some more zooplankton nets this
afternoon – Sari Giering is keen to have a lst go at collecting some
more of the trichodesmium nitrogen-fixing bacteria, this time to get
some samples for some DNA analysis.

Nick shows us the engine room

The clear-up of the labs has begun. The ship has a fast turn-around
in Southampton, so we need to be ready when we arrive tomorrow evening
to get some of the larger bits of equipment and container labs off. Some
of the scientists took some time to go on a tour of the ship’s engines.
Nick, the 2nd enginner, showed us around those normally hidden parts of
the ship that power us through the water, provide fine-control of the
ship’s position when we are working a station, as well as powering all
our instruments, making our freshwater, ventilating the ship, and
treating the sewerage. Remember there are about 50 people living on this
100m-long metal box for several weeks at a time: the ship is like a
small, very independent village.